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Thursday, March 19, 2015

"Viewership and readership for the mainstream media has been on the decline for years, and it is partly because more and more Americans are realizing that they can get more honest coverage in the alternative press."

NBC ratings plummet as public realizes MSM is total theater; alternative media is the future of truthful reporting

by: J. D. Heyes

The fallout for NBC following the outing of serial liar and former host of the network's Nightly News broadcast, Brian Williams, is continuing, as ratings have plunged and continue to free fall.

Deadline Hollywood reported recently that the ratings decline has extended into the double digits, citing ratings service Nielsen.

On the previous Wednesday before Williams announced that he had fibbed about being shot at during a helicopter ride in the early days of the Iraq war, NBC beat out ABC's World News Tonight by nearly 400,000 viewers. Two weeks earlier, NBC beat out ABC by more than 600,000 viewers, according to Deadline Hollywood.

On the most recent Wednesday of the ratings period -- Feb. 11 -- the first night that Williams' name had been taken off the broadcast, ABC beat out NBC by almost 350,000 views.

Fallout coming in the form of falling ratings

As reported by NewsMax:

ABC also had 109,000 more viewers in the coveted 25-54 demographic. NBC has held this group since the beginning of 2015 -- by almost 500,000 viewers on Feb. 4 and by approximately 300,000 two weeks ago.

By Thursday night, the total number of viewers on "NBC Nightly News" fell by more than a million, to 8.570 million from 9.802 million on Monday night.

Eventually, ABC took its largest lead over NBC in years, and even CBS's Evening News gained viewers.

After his admission and the ensuing fallout, NBC announced that it was suspending Williams without pay. He reportedly makes about $13 million a year.

Before the admission, NBC was the top-rated broadcast network evening newscast. CBS was, and remains, in third place.

Williams first voluntarily stepped away from his anchor's chair. His downfall comes following a Stars and Stripes exclusive about his lies about being in a Chinook helicopter that was shot at by enemy forces during the early days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Since the initial report, several other instances of Williams telling tall tales have emerged, and now the network execs want to determine the extent of those in a bid to regain some of the nightly broadcast's shattered integrity.

As reported by the New York Post:

A special team of producers and news reporters has been assigned to investigate the network's big-bucks journalist after he claimed he was on a helicopter forced down by enemy fire while covering the Iraq war in 2003 -- when he was actually traveling safely on another chopper.

Now Williams is also on the hot seat over claims over his work in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, when he said he watched dead bodies floating near his French Quarter hotel.

After years of covering up the lie for Williams, NBC execs finally had to give in to public pressure and agree to the investigation when the anchorman admitted on the air that he had fabricated the incident. Williams was forced to cop to the fib after enough former U.S. military personnel who were either flying in choppers that were actually shot at that day or in the chopper with Williams (which was 30-60 minutes behind the flight of choppers under fire) contacted the network to complain.

The Post noted that Williams at first did not want to take sole blame for the Iraq "misremembering." The paper's Page Six noted that sources said that, in the original on-air apology script, Williams wanted to say his bogus story was "a bungled attempt by us [my emphasis] to thank one special veteran."

However, some of Williams' co-workers balked at that just before the broadcast, insisting he take full credit by changing that line to "a bungled attempt by me [my emphasis]." And the co-workers won the day.

In the days following the admission and Williams' departure from the broadcast, NBC News president Deborah Turness sent an email to employees announcing that the news division would be further scrutinizing Williams' other reporting.

Viewership and readership for the mainstream media has been on the decline for years, and it is partly because more and more Americans are realizing that they can get more honest coverage in the alternative press.

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So I am a blogger now.

This is my entry into the world of blogging. Don't know if anyone will ever see it or care, but here it goes. I intend it be a humorous, music, sports and current issues flavored site with postings of links to my favorite videos, info about my favorite bands, stuff I find funny and things I find newsworthy. It might become political at times. I just can't help myself. I will also use this as a forum to put things out there for information and education sake. I like to expose people to alternative ways of viewing events both past and present. I never believe everything I read and don't claim to have all the answers despite what many of you who know me believe. Hence the title of my blog. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to pass on any comments.

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